


You Had Your Perfect Little Script

by deathrae



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Gen, IT BIG, LIKE SERIOUSLY MAJOR, Nortified!Lea AU, Oops, because apparently I like suffering, major spoilers for Dream Drop Distance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-07
Updated: 2016-01-07
Packaged: 2018-05-12 09:25:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5661295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathrae/pseuds/deathrae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>"...but you forgot to write the sequel! Now let’s find out what happens!" - Axel (–no, <b>Lea</b>, got it memorized?)</em>
</p><p>Xehanort's greatest strength has always been his flexibility, how quickly he adapts to changes in his plans, and this new change is a doozy...</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Had Your Perfect Little Script

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so @vintageAerith told me about this fan theory that the heart-of-darkness intended for Sora at the end of Dream Drop wouldn't have been destroyed so easily, that maybe Lea's coat wouldn't have been enough to repel it... that maybe, just maybe, Lea got hit with it instead but no one noticed that it got inside him.
> 
> That maybe, just _maybe,_ that's why he can finally summon his keyblade when it's all over.
> 
> ...so here's one way _that_ might go down.

 

It started with a pain in his chest.

In all the panic of pulling Sora out of the Round Room, of escaping the empty, abandoned thrones of Xehanort’s twelve (not thirteen, but only barely), of returning to the waking world and the Sorcerer’s Tower, Lea only barely registered the uncomfortable tingle of energy traveling up his arm after he dispelled his chakram. Sora, however, was the focus, and rightly so—retrieving his heart from slumbering darkness far and away deserved the small group’s priority.

So he said nothing, and stood against the wall as Riku dove into Sora’s heart, and he rubbed his arm when the tingling worked up closer to his elbow. It moved slow, only reaching his shoulder over the course of hours.

It sharpened into a burn up his bones when he manifested his Keyblade, and he decided it must have been his blade eager to come to his next call, and grinned, and kept it to himself when Sora and the three gathered Masters around him gaped and stared like he’d grown a second head.

The next morning the odd sensation was gone, replaced by a dull, throbbing ache in his chest. It hurt to breathe, and he lay in his borrowed bed in the Tower and breathed shallow and short like he could outsmart the pain.

When Riku knocked on his door (“Kairi’s here, she wants to say hi”) he dragged himself out into the common room of the Tower and with the practice of more than a decade of lying he hid his grimace and his wince and the wheeze in his breath behind a grin and a wink and a sly “hey, sorry about that whole _kidnapping_ thing last time we met. Promise I won’t do it again.”

She wasn’t impressed, and looked him up and down. “Axel,” she said, with just a hint of acid.

“Actually it’s Lea, now,” he said, tired of doing this. But instead of brushing him off and using Axel anyway, she stared at him, frowning. Gears turned behind those blue eyes, and she gasped, those eyes suddenly very, very wide.

“ _Lea?”_ she echoed, her voice a breath.

“Yyyyes,” he said slowly. “I just said that.”

She pulled a necklace from under her shirt collar. He opened his mouth to quip something about how bad he looked in blue before he stopped himself. Something was familiar about that necklace. Something...old. Almost from another life.

“Wait,” he said softly, then snapped “ _wait_ ,” and she grinned. “No fuckin’ way,” he yelled now, “No _fuckin’ way!”_ and she laughed and threw herself at him and he grunted. He wrapped his arms around her and laughed and he tried to pretend he hadn’t seen the confused look in Riku’s eyes, tried to pretend his grin hadn’t slipped for a second to a twisted knot of pain as her body collided against his ribs.

Training under newly minted Master Riku was tough when his chest ached and his ribs burned with an alien feeling of _raw_ ness like someone was roasting him from the inside.

Training alongside Sora and Kairi was tougher, when Sora liked slapping him on the back when he figured out the little tricks and talents of his keyblade and when Kairi liked to pull him down and ruffle his hair when he wrestled a spell (that _wasn’t_ just another variation on Firaga) into submission.

He woke up in the middle of the night sometimes with Saïx—Isa?— _Saïx’s_ voice in his head and that slow smoker’s growl of Xehanort echoing in his ears, whispering of freedom and power.

The clock on his nightstand passively reported that it was 3 in the morning. He was awake again, Xehanort’s voice echoing from deep in his head—his heart?—and this time was different. This time he whispered the impossible promise of bringing back the one thing he missed most.

Lea bent over the sink in his little bathroom and watched the water run, trying to let the splashing drown out the sound of the old man’s voice.

 _I know there’s just one person you want back,_ that voice purred from inside his skull. _He is beyond your reach_... _but not beyond **mine.**_

Roxas.

A low chuckle, deep and almost echoing, and Lea didn’t feel like questioning how it could respond to him. _I can get him back for you. You only have to do one thing for me..._

He looked up, and in the mirror, between the errant crack and spotted stain, he saw his bright green eyes glow and shift color just slightly, bright enough that he winced and looked away.

When the glow faded he blinked spots from his vision and looked at himself in the mirror again.

The eyes looking back at him weren’t his, but were. But _weren’t_.

They were gold.

“They’ll know,” he whispered to the Xehanort in his mirror, and he didn’t know why, he didn’t know why he was even entertaining this idea for a second, why he didn’t march out of his room _right now_ and go tell someone, Mickey, Riku, Yen Sid, _someone_.

That laugh again. Mocking this time.

 _All right... but just for now_.

He blinked, and his eyes were green again.

But he couldn’t shake the feeling those weren’t his eyes. Not anymore.

Morning came, proper morning with sunlight and coffee in a pot downstairs, and when he sat up in bed his ears ached like someone’d torn them. He winced, swore under his breath, yanked his hands up to cup his ears as if blocking them from the air would hurt less. It didn’t. His fingers fell against skin and he froze.

His ears didn’t feel the same.

He poked and prodded, ran his fingers up and around where there should’ve been a curve.

“You old bastard,” he whispered, stumbling out of bed back to his mirror, twisting to see what he prayed he wouldn’t find.

His ears were stretched and warped, rising to a sharp tip.

“You have no idea what _subtlety_ means, do you, you mad son of a bitch,” he hissed at his mirror, but there was no reply.

He fussed with his hair and tied it back until it would cover up the pointed tips and stay there. Someone would find him out, he knew that, but maybe. Maybe he could play it safe, long enough to get out, to find help. He still had old contacts, he knew some of the first Organization were back in Radiant Garden... Zexion—Ienzo. He might have ideas.

A spasm shook his heart and burned his ribs and his chest ached raw and sharp and without remorse. He fell to his knees in front of his bedroom door and panted against the wood while he waited for the old man to loosen his curled grip on his heart.

“All right,” he whispered, though he knew Xehanort could hear him anyway. The old man didn’t speak, but the pain got his point across: _When you leave, you’re mine_.

Riku watched him from across the mess hall with a mug against his lips. Lea tried not to look at him, his eyes skittering past Riku a few times before Riku’s own eyes narrowed, scrutinizing, and he got up from his chair, moving to sit next to Lea. He stiffened, tried to pretend he was stretching.

Riku glanced at him from the corner of his eye.

“You know, your boyfriend’s gonna get the wrong idea if you keep looking at me like that,” Lea said, raising an eyebrow with a smirk like Riku almost might believe he was serious.

Riku smirked and fired back with all the practice of someone who grew up sassing Sora and _Kairi_.

“Nah, he knows you’ve only got eyes for Roxas. My girlfriend, on the other hand, might be grumpy until I tell her you’re not a threat.”

Lea blinked at him, and Riku had never looked so smug as he did in that moment as he sipped his coffee, set aside the mug, and then leaned in close to Lea.

“Okay, seriously man,” Lea started.

Riku breathed in.

“What the hell are you doing.”

Riku pulled back and there was something in his eyes Lea wasn’t ready for. Sorrow? Confusion, but also something like regret. Or sympathy. It was as confusing as it was alien.

 _He knows the scent of darkness_ , the voice in his heart realized, furious and frantic, and Lea wasn’t ready for the surge.

Pain lanced through his skull, radiating outward through his bones, and he fell back off his bench, screaming and writhing and twisting as darkness flooded his mind. He was aware, vaguely, that he leapt to his feet and drew power from the place his keyblade dwelled just as Riku drew his. He was aware, vaguely, that Riku threw a barrier to block the door when Kairi came running at the sound of Lea’s scream.

He was aware, vaguely, that his hair had come loose and his eyes weren’t his, because Riku jerked back a step and whispered “No! How–? When–!”

Riku’s mouth formed the name, _Xehanort_ , and Lea—no, Xehanort—lashed out with a keyblade that wasn’t Lea’s, and darkness slashed up across Riku’s un-barriered front like a blade, cutting open his shoulder and his face, then down again, catching his jaw. Xehanort laughed inside his skull—no. Outside. _He_ was laughing.

“How good of you to give me this opportunity, Riku!” he growled, and Riku staggered back, fell, leaned on his keyblade with a hand clutched to his face as his skin smoked and bled beneath his fingers. “The poetry is irresistible. You’re not the first Master to stand against me like this and take those scars from me... but you may yet be the _last_.”

Lea—Xehanort walked to the wall and a Corridor of Darkness opened up before him like an old friend, tendrils of shadow wrapping around him like an embrace, and he sank into the ink of darkness and emptiness.

 _You promised me Roxas_ , he whispered into the void as he— _they_ fell through to their destination.

_All in due time, Axel. All in due time._

He couldn’t find his voice to dispute the name.

After all this time, Lea had died. Again.

Trapped, in a cracked bathroom mirror, where no one could hear him scream.


End file.
